I launched Courtney Beyer Design in January of 2017, so the new year also marks the anniversary of starting my own business! I felt like I was always on a growth curve this year and I tried so many new things - lots of success and failures, but mostly a lot of hard work. In late December of 2017 I was feeling stressed about the year, primarily realizing how uncomfortable I felt most of the time. Not a healthy mindset at all. This post is for me to look back and see what I learned and did this year - take it all in a feel some pride. I also have reflected on how much my family and friends have supported me this year - big hugs and kisses and thank yous! Thank you for joining me on this crazy journey this past year!

My Instagram post for best nine!

January

I launched Courtney Beyer Design and created my website! It was not pretty, and I used my IG feed as the homepage of images. Kind of wish I had a screenshot but glad on the other hand?!

I also launched my Etsy store. My first products were hand block printed Valentine’s Day Cards. This was the first time selling my art.

February

I created a large wall art piece. The white wall behind the TV had been staring at me for years, and the art I had found just did not work. This was a personal project to practice making crazy ideas a reality. I love the results, and it is still up today. It is a reminder that I one day want to do large-scale installation or mural.

Painting recycled cardboard

so many shape and colors!

I used a box cutter to carve out the shapes

The final installation. So much color - movement and blends perfectly with the other colors of the house.

I also added spring themed block print cards and tea towels to my Etsy shop. This doubled the number of products in my store. The tea towels were wildly popular.

During these months I was hand drawing a lot of designs but still had not figured out how to make digital patterns. Many tears, skillshare videos, and hours later I finally figured it out!

March

The last day of March I finally created my 1st repeat pattern based on my hand drawings. This was a turning point in creating digital repeating patterns from my hand drawings.

You can see my illustrator art board with the tile and then the full seamless repeat next to it!

April

After I made my first pattern, my second pattern was used by Body Zone Swim for one of their swimsuits. It was so exciting to see my pattern on a suit! I still wear my suit today. You can read more about the design process here.

Suit on the left and pattern on the right!

I had my 1st pop-up shop at West Elm the first week of April. Making the call to ask to have a pop-up so so scary and I did not feel ready at all! Now I feel so comfortable doing pop-ups, but I also learned that I do not like doing pop-up shops. There is a lot of waiting which is hard for me. I also realized that selling my block printed products is not going to be a sustainable business. I am so happy that I did go through the process of figuring out how to sell products in person.

I lead my 1st corporate block printing workshop to a team of engineers. I loved enabling and encouraging people to feel creative. More about my workshops here.

Teaching block printing techniques

I started the 100-day project pledging to post 100 patterns hand drawn or digital. This project got me into a habit of creating and digitalizing on a daily basis. So much practice!

May

My sister, Caitlin Beyer, took professional photos of my block prints and myself. She is a beyond fantastic photographer, and it was awesome to work together on a project.

So professional and focused

The dining room table studio

The finished product!

I love this one!

June

In June we went on a mom and sisters trip to Santa Fe, NM. It was a special trip to bond with my girls as well as be inspired by Georgia O’Keefe - her work and life as an artist. The colors of Santa Fe were unreal!

One of the reasons my sister took photos was for my Brika shop page. I was accepted as a seller for the online store which was so exciting to expand my product reach. I also realized that it was a lot of work and for the sales I received. I have since closed the shop. Another lesson learned.

July and August

I started selling my block print cards and tea towels at my first brick and mortar store, University Art in Redwood City. It is a gem of a local art store where I have bought my art supplies my whole life. It felt full circle!

I also finished my 100-day project! This project pushed me to start to develop my style and then push it further. I also had enough patterns to update my website and created an online portfolio. The 100-day project also pushed me to explore the pattern design industry and what "it takes" to make money in the industry.

My tea towels on display at University Art. Something I would not have believed back in Feb.

September and October

In September I turned 31, a year since my career shifting trip to Spain and Morocco. I was honored that Uppercase Magazine posted about my trip and experience on their blog!

I was able to do illustration work for one of my UX design clients. I created over 90 illustrations for the project. Illustrations were not part of the original scope of the project and I this was a surprise add-on. I doubted myself in the beginning, but I was so happy with the results and being challenged by the project! Doing more illustration work is one of my goals for 2018! Read more here

November and Dececmber

I launched my bi-monthly newsletter - the repeat! You can sign up at the bottom of this page! It has been an excellent way for me to connect with my followers and industry professional with my most recent work. Sending out the newsletter was a huge hurdle for me, and it took me about three months to get enough courage to start sending it out. I am now fully committed and have sent out three newsletters so far!

I joined an online community called the Textile Design Lab which offers classes and has groups for aspiring pattern designers. I took a mini-course in November that pushed me to apply to Design Studios to hopefully take me on as an artist. I have not be accepted yet but getting over the fear of reaching out was a more significant hurdle. I am not giving up yet!

I designed a few holiday cards using my patterns and sold on Etsy and at one holiday fair. It was the first time that sold products with my pattern designs. Until this point, it was just block printed products. I loved how they turned out and am looking forward to making more products in 2018. What products do you want to see my patterns on?

2017 by the numbers:

5 pop up shops

79 sales on Etsy

125 Digital repeat designs

4 corporate block printing workshops

Thank you so much for following along on my first year of Courtney Beyer Design. I am so excited for year two. I am really going to focus on just creating patterns and my goal is to start selling and licensing. I also have realized it is going to take awhile to make money from selling my patterns. I am also excited to work as a UX design consultant, and illustration commissions to add to my income. It will be a balancing act for sure. The one thing I have learned from this year is that anything that makes me feel uncomfortable will eventually feel comfortable if I do not give up.

I am so excited to share with you the illustrations I created for my most recent client project! I worked with an amazing web design studio, Punctum Design, and the VA on this project. Although I was hired as a UX designer - and I did a lot of UX-ing, I also got to do a ton of illustrating - which is pretty new for me. Illustration was not originally part of the scope of the project but turned out to be the best solution to adding visual enhancement to the website. The project for sure pushed me out of my comfort zone but I am so glad that it did.

Wait what is this project about?

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Let’s back up a little. Our clients were a part of a mental health organization focused on improving treatment methods for PTSD in veteran populations. We were tasked with redesigning their PTSD training website for non-VA therapists. The training modules were pretty text heavy - naturally - and Katie, the creative director, and I, had to figure out the best way to break up the text as well as visually show information. Charts and graphs only went so far for this project, we also realized that stock photos would not cut it and doing our own photoshoot was out of the budget and would not satisfy all of our needs.

We started to play around with the idea of illustrations. Neither of us are super realistic illustrators, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. What we figured out was that if we created less-human-like characters, we would avoid the issue of needing to represent every type of person. We wanted to create illustrations that were friendly, helpful, had emotions, but gender, race, and age neutral. We also realized we needed to make the illustrations simple so that we could quickly create a variety of illustrations just by tweaking a few components.

early character sketches from my sketchbook

iPad pro to the rescue

I first started with some sketches - and it just happened that I got my birthday present, an iPad pro and an apple pen the day I started working on the first illustrations. Nothing like a project to learn a new tool fast! Thanks to Adobe Creative Suite - I started using Adobe Draw on my iPad and could upload my sketches to illustrator seamlessly.

core-exchange.org all rights reserved

core-exchange.org all rights reserved

core-exchange.org all rights reserved

The client loved the sample drawings and we just kept creating. My drawing process was to come up with as many ideas as possible based on the information presented in the text. I would sketch on my iPad, bring the designs into AI, do a little cleaning and then add to our “base” illustration characters. Katie and I worked closely and she was great a pushing my ideas and skills, creating ideas and tweaking. It was a solid team effort to produce the best possible designs. In total, the website has over 90 illustrations!

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Never throw away your sketches

Early on in the design process Katie suggested I try drawing full body illustration. I worked through it and created some sketches, but we decided to stick with our body-less characters - mostly for space constraints, and simplicity. On the last training module we wanted to illustrate a long case study. We wanted the illustrations to look more human like - I went back to those more human like sketches from months before and they worked perfectly. It was so funny how I originally thought those drawings were a waste of time - but in the end they saved us a ton of time and ensured we met our deadline. Lesson learned - keep all your sketches.

early character sketches from my sketchbook

core-exchange.org all rights reserved

core-exchange.org all rights reserved

Vector is key

core-exchange.org all rights reserved

For the case study illustrations we worked closely with the client to pick appropriate skin tones and genders for the illustrations. Adobe Illustrator allowed us to tweak, change and make many samples for the client. We wanted to be extremely cognizant and represent as many people as possible. We also know we are not perfect, and if the client does give feedback, we can easily change colors and drawings as needed. Not so easy if we did a photoshoot.

I was so honored to be part of this amazing project and work on something that I hope will benefit many in the near future.

Over the last year I taught many block printing workshops to tech teams all over Silicon Valley, and what I loved most about teaching the workshops was watching the teams transformation from skeptics - can we as engineers really make this print thing? Will this even be fun? To pure excitement and pride look what we created, this is so awesome, I can’t believe we made this by hand! To get to this excited state the team always had to go through frustration and embracing imperfection. Imperfection is not tolerated very well at work and perfection is the standard - design, code, marketing, sales pitches - all need to be perfect to succeed.

In block printing imperfection is unavoidable, expected and must be embraced. You can’t ‘un-carve’ a block and so for my workshops, everyone that made a mistake had to learn to embrace it and be ok with it.

Every class follows the same process: sketch out designs on paper, transfer the design to rubber blocks, carve the rubber blocks, then with paint print the blocks on cards or clothe. I watched each team go through phases of skepticism, frustration, focus and finally surprise and excitement.

Skepticism

At the beginning of the workshop I would explain the block printing process and I would see confusion, doubt, and a little resistance on everyone’s face. I knew this was a good sign because it meant that the rewards would be even better at the end of the class.

Imperfection and Frustration

The class started with everyone sketching a design they would like to carve and print. I don’t allow the class to spend more than 15-20 min on the design. This is the part when people got precious about drawing the perfect design and started to stress when it was time to move on to carving - designers were the worst ;-). I really encouraged everyone not to worry and pushed them along. It is ok not to feel perfect.

Once everyone started carving their block, frustration and imperfection hit people right in the face as they inevitably would make a ‘wrong’ carve. And those ‘mistakes’ would forces people to either embrace the imperfection or work around it and tweak the design on the fly. There was no starting over.

Focus

After the first few carving mistakes and getting the hang of carving the room would suddenly go silent. This was the turning point of the workshop when people started to get into the flow and really focus on carving their block. I could see everyone relax and start to enjoy the process. Carving has a very meditative quality.

Surprise and Excitement

Finally it is time to print! I would always demo the print process, and when I would pick up the first print I would always hear an “ahh” as everyone suddenly understood the magic and beauty of block printing. Printing also brings a second wave of frustration, it takes practice to have the right amount of paint and apply the right amount of pressure to get the perfect print. Block printing does not produce exact prints, and each print is a little different, a little imperfect. I encouraged lots of practice and as everyone started to understand the nuances of printing. Soon everyone started admiring each other's prints, admiring their work, imperfections and all. Smiles and pride was all around, it was an amazing to watch and facilitate the transformation.

Being able to share my love of block printing but more importantly taking a team through this challenging creative process is so rewarding. In a time when we work on the computer all day - every day and need to make sure everything create is perfect it is so healthy to take time away from the screen and make something with your hands.

Does your team need to get away from the computer, and create something unique together? I am booking block printing workshops for 2018. Visit my website to learn more or email me at Courtney@courtneybeyerdesign.com or complete this form.

I would love to help guide your team through a block printing workshop and see what we can create together!

I was beyond honored and thrilled when Uppercase Magazine accepted my submission and posted about my trip to Spain last Oct. Over a year later, I often reflect back on the trip- not for how it changed the course of my career or the beauty of the Alhambra but how the people I met expanded my world view. For one of the first times in my life I was a minority - being a white, christian, non-headscarf wearing woman, in a group of mostly muslim women. We all became fast friends - and plainly put - I learned more in those 5 days - then any podcast, article, class, book combined. As horrible and hateful things continue to be said and done around the world - I am just a quick What's App message away from making sure we are all OK and that we are on track for our next art class adventure.

For Courtney Beyer, a trip overseas led to a whole new career path

Here's an inspiring story from an UPPERCASE reader. It would have been a good fit to the content of the summer issue #34's Explore issue, but I had already finished that issue when I heard from Courtney. She writes, "I went to Granada, Spain for an Islamic Art workshop that I signed up for on a whim. It changed my life and now I am a pattern designer."

Details of plaster carving in the Alhambra, Granada Spain

"Last September traveled to southern Spain and Morocco to celebrate my 30th birthday and take in as much Islamic pattern tile as possible. At the time I was a web designer in Silicon Valley and feeling like I was going to more meetings then designing. Before the trip I came across a workshop in Granada, Spain called the Art of Islamic Pattern, a 5-day workshop to learn to draw Islamic patterns and visit the Alhambra." The dates of the workshop lined up with her itinerary and she signed up. "I am usually not this spontaneous," she admits.

The Alhambra at Sunset

But this leap of faith turned out to be life-changing. "I reconnected and re-valued the craft of drawing and pattern making," she says. "I also connected with other artist on the trip who were mostly Arab in background either from England or the Middle East. I learned so much from them, about history—and about how much is actually not taught in school."

Carving Islamic patterns into leather

carved plaster and tiles details from the Alhabmra

Tile details from the Alhambra

My sketch of the motif pictured above

"The trip set me on a path to quitting my job." Inspired to start creating with her hands again, she decided to specialize in block prints and surface pattern designs through her company Courtney Beyer Design that she founded in January of this year. "I sell hand-printed cards, journals and tea towels on my Etsy shop and I am working on a pattern line."

Courtney says that one of her instructors taught the class a prayer that she now recites to herself before taking on a creative assignment or project: